Without a deal, APF delays jail job fair

Hilton’s candidate to run Hardin prison also has criminal past

A job fair scheduled for next week by the prospective operators
of the Hardin jail has been postponed, but 400 to 500 high school
students are still scheduled to dine at the jail later this
month.

Becky Shay, the spokeswoman for American Police Force in Hardin,
said the two-day job fair has been postponed because contract talks
with the city's economic development agency were derailed by the
resignation of the agency's attorney.

"We want to make sure we have jobs to hire for," Shay said.

APF is hoping to reschedule that event, but a banquet for
several hundred members of the Montana Association of Student
Councils, meeting for their state convention in Hardin on Oct.
19-21, is still scheduled in the empty jail on Oct. 20.

Mitch Evans, the student council adviser at Hardin High School,
said the banquet was arranged early in 2009, long before APF rolled
into town. He said Two Rivers Authority, the tax-funded economic
development agency that built the jail, offered to host the
banquet.

Evans said organizers thought it would be instructive for
students to dine there and to tour the empty jail as a way of
reinforcing the idea that this is not where any of them would want
to end up.

"It was also more of a novelty," he said. "That was the
reasoning behind it."

Once APF came into the picture, he said, the company was hoping
to have employees on hand who could cook the meal in the jail's
kitchen as a way of breaking in the staff and the facility.

Because the only local hire has been Shay, whose office is in
the jail, "I don't see that happening now," Evans said. There is
still a possibility that the kitchen will be used for the banquet,
but the event is more likely to be catered, he said.

Two Rivers Authority signed a preliminary contract with APF last
month, but when the Two Rivers board met Monday to talk about an
updated contract, it voted to postpone further negotiations until
it retained the services of a new lawyer.

Former Hardin City Attorney Becky Convery, who was hired by Two
Rivers early in September to draw up the contract with APF,
announced last week that she was quitting that job because it
conflicted with work she was still doing for the city.

Al Peterson, vice president of the Two Rivers board, said the
board already asked Billings attorney Harlan Krogh if he was
interested in assisting the agency. Krogh declined, Peterson said,
because he also does some work for the city of Hardin, but he
offered to help Two Rivers find someone else.

Whoever is hired, Peterson said, would work "very part time" on
a contract basis, as Convery did. Two Rivers is, however, looking
for a full-time director, following the resignation of Greg
Smith.

Smith had been placed on paid administrative leave in
mid-September for reasons that were never disclosed. His
resignation letter, accepted by the Two Rivers board Monday night,
contained only such vague statements such as "I feel it is time
that I take my career path to other venues."

Meanwhile, Shay was alerting members of the media Wednesday
about the criminal past of Michael Cohen, who had been named by APF
founder Michael Hilton as the man he had hired to run the prison
and military training center that APF supposedly was going to open
in Hardin.

"I realize APF doesn't look good, and APF may never look good,"
Shay said, but Cohen "has his own history."

TRA board member Bob Crane caused a stir at the Monday meeting
when he disclosed that he had called Cohen, a private security
contractor in Ohio, and was told that Cohen had never agreed to
work for APF, much less signed a contract.

Cohen was working for the Secret Service, supervising the
agency's Philadelphia fraud squad, when he was accused of stealing
$2,800 in the course of seizing assets in two different Secret
Service investigations.

He was eventually found guilty of theft and other charges and
sentenced to 33 months in prison. He ended up serving a little more
than 14 months, according to The Associated Press.

On Wednesday, Shay released an e-mail from Cohen to Hilton,
dated Sept. 21, 2009, in which Cohen disclosed his theft
conviction, though not his prison term, and said he was still
interested in "a position with your company."

Shay said the e-mail shows that Cohen, contrary to earlier
statements he made to The Gazette, did not sever ties to APF and
was still interested in a job.

"Frankly, my understanding was that he was hired and he was
coming to town," Shay said.

Cohen said the e-mail shows only that he did not try to hide his
past and that Hilton never even mentioned a specific job with APF.
He said he was interested in being an international security
training consultant, and didn't know until he was contacted by
Crane, the Two Rivers board member, that he was being touted by
Hilton as his operations director at the Hardin jail.

"He never gave me any specifics," Cohen said, and "I've had no
affiliation with this guy."

Peterson confirmed Wednesday that Hilton presented the board
only with Cohen's resume - which Cohen sent to Hilton along with an
employment application - and not an employment contract.

As for Hilton's own criminal background - which includes
convictions for theft and fraud and time in prison - Shay said
Hilton disclosed all of it to her before she left her job as a
Gazette reporter and went to work for Hilton.

She said press accounts of Hilton's lengthy criminal history and
two bankruptcy proceedings included only one small detail that was
new to her. She also said Hilton disclosed the same information to
Peterson.

Peterson confirmed that, saying Hilton came clean on his record
about a week after Peterson and other Two Rivers representatives
returned from a California meeting with Hilton in early September.
Peterson said he thought Hilton was going to publicly disclose his
criminal background when he made his first public appearance in
Hardin in mid-September, but he failed to do so. Peterson said he
didn't know why.

Even without the job fair next week, Shay said, Hilton is
planning to come back to Hardin soon and was still making travel
arrangements on Wednesday. Among other things, she said, Hilton
still has two real estate transactions to complete - the purchase
of one house in Hardin for Shay and one for him.